File photo My family holds firmly to the belief that my husband and I are keeping something from them, something imminent and important. My current appointment is nearly up, I need a new job, and thus we need to move. My parents have been persistent, and for months my response has been, "We don't know where we are moving. We just know we are going to move." They feel excluded, yet I do, too. I am not privy to something important that is happening in my life. And so continues my tenure-track qu

Courtesy of Alex Wilson I am an alien, a resident alien postdoctoral research associate. I didn't seek out the fate of an alien postdoc; it came to me as a gift from the man I fell in love with. Being an alien is fundamentally about not belonging. Not belonging is difficult. It is challenging and, we are told, ultimately rewarding. This is true, but it is not always easy to see the rewards when, on a daily basis you are faced with challenges that, while frequently small, can appear very large.